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1998 In Literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1998. Events *March 5 – Tennessee Williams' 1938 play ''Not About Nightingales'' receives its stage première in London, in a collaboration between the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain and Corin and Vanessa Redgrave's Moving Theatre. *October **The death of the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom Ted Hughes leaves a gap of several months before a successor, Andrew Motion, is designated the following spring. **Kinoko Nasu (奈須きのこ) launches the ''Kara no Kyōkai'' series, with five chapters released online. *November 18 – Alice McDermott wins the National Book Award with her novel ''Charming Billy''. *December – ''The Strand Magazine'' title is revived in the United States. New books Fiction *Turki al-Hamad – ''Adama'' (first volume in ''Atyaf al-Aziqah al-Mahjurah'' (Phantoms of the Deserted Alley) trilogy) *Tariq Ali – ''The Book of Saladin'' *Aaron Allston **'' Iron Fist'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
March 5
Events Pre-1600 * 363 – Roman emperor Julian leaves Antioch with an army of 90,000 to attack the Sasanian Empire, in a campaign which would bring about his own death. * 1046 – Nasir Khusraw begins the seven-year Middle Eastern journey which he will later describe in his book ''Safarnama''. * 1279 – The Livonian Order is defeated in the Battle of Aizkraukle by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. * 1496 – King Henry VII of England issues letters patent to John Cabot and his sons, authorising them to explore unknown lands. 1601–1900 * 1616 – Nicolaus Copernicus's book ''On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres'' is added to the Index of Forbidden Books 73 years after it was first published. * 1766 – Antonio de Ulloa, the first Spanish governor of Louisiana, arrives in New Orleans. * 1770 – Boston Massacre: Five Americans, including Crispus Attucks, are fatally shot by British troops in an event that would contribute to the outbreak of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tariq Ali
Tariq Ali (; born 21 October 1943) is a Pakistani-British political activist, writer, journalist, historian, filmmaker, and public intellectual. He is a member of the editorial committee of the ''New Left Review'' and ''Sin Permiso'', and contributes to ''The Guardian'', ''CounterPunch'', and the ''London Review of Books''. He read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Exeter College, Oxford. He is the author of many books, including ''Pakistan: Military Rule or People's Power'' (1970), ''Can Pakistan Survive? The Death of a State'' (1983), ''Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity'' (2002), ''Bush in Babylon'' (2003), ''Conversations with Edward Said'' (2005), ''Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis Of Hope'' (2006), ''A Banker for All Seasons'' (2007), ''The Duel'' (2008), ''The Obama Syndrome'' (2010), and '' The Extreme Centre: A Warning'' (2015). Early life Ali was born and raised in Lahore, Punjab in British India (later part of Pakistan). He is the son of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Julian Barnes
Julian Patrick Barnes (born 19 January 1946) is an English writer. He won the Man Booker Prize in 2011 with ''The Sense of an Ending'', having been shortlisted three times previously with '' Flaubert's Parrot'', ''England, England'', and '' Arthur & George''. Barnes has also written crime fiction under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh. In addition to novels, Barnes has published collections of essays and short stories. In 2004 he became a Commandeur of L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. His honours also include the Somerset Maugham Award and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. He was awarded the 2021 Jerusalem Prize. Early life Barnes was born in Leicester, although his family moved to the outer suburbs of London six weeks afterwards. Both of his parents were French teachers. He has said that his support for Leicester City Football Club was, aged four or five, "a sentimental way of hanging on" to his home city. At the age of 10, Barnes was told by his mother that he had "too much imagin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alessandro Barbero
Alessandro Barbero (born April 30, 1959) is an Italian historian, novelist and essayist. Barbero was born in Turin. He attended the University of Turin, where he studied literature and Medieval history. He won the 1996 Strega Prize, Italy's most distinguished literary award, for ''Bella vita e guerre altrui di Mr. Pyle gentiluomo''. His second novel, ''Romanzo russo. Fiutando i futuri supplizi'', has been translated into English as The Anonymous Novel. Sensing the Future Torments' (Sulaisiadar 'san Rudha: Vagabond Voices, 2010). Franco Cardini wrote in ''Il Giornale'', "Barbero uses the diabolic skills of an erudite and professional narrator to seek out massacres of the distant and recent past. ''The Anonymous Novel'' concerns the past-that-never-passes (whether Tsarist or Stalinist) and the future that in 1988 was impending and has now arrived". Allan Massie wrote in ''The Scotsman'', ""If you have any feeling for Russia or for the art of the novel, then read this one. You wil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inversions (novel)
''Inversions'' is a science fiction novel by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks, first published in 1998. Banks has said "''Inversions'' was an attempt to write a Culture novel that wasn't." Plot The book takes place on a fictional planet resembling late-Middle Ages Europe. A large empire broke up in the decade or so preceding the action, apparently from meteor or asteroid strikes that severely affected farming across much of the globe. The remnants of the empire still war with one another. The narrative alternates chapter-by-chapter between two concurrent story-lines, with alternating chapter headings of The Doctor and The Bodyguard. ''The Doctor'' The first storyline is presented as a written account from Oelph, publicly a doctor's assistant, but privately a spy for an individual identified only as "Master", to whom much of the account is addressed. Oelph is the assistant to Vosill, the personal doctor to King Quience of Haspidus—and a woman. The latter is unheard of in the pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Master Georgie
''Master Georgie'' is a 1998 historical novel by English novelist Beryl Bainbridge. It deals with the British experience of the Crimean War through the adventures of the eponymous central character George Hardy, who volunteers to work on the battlefields. The novel was a New York Times Book Review Notable Book and won the WH Smith Literary Award in 1999. It was nominated for the Booker Prize in what was Bainbridge's fifth nomination. Plot summary The novel is told in six chapters, the first two set in Liverpool in 1846 and 1850, the remainder set in 1854 Crimea ending outside Sevastopol. George Hardy, an attractive English surgeon, amateur photographer and bisexual, leaves his affluent lifestyle in Liverpool, where he is heir to a fortune, to go to war at Inkerman in the Crimea. He believes "that the war would at last provide him with the prop he needed." His story is told by three other characters: Myrtle, a lovestruck foundling Foundling may refer to: * An abandoned chil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beryl Bainbridge
Dame Beryl Margaret Bainbridge (21 November 1932 – 2 July 2010) was an English writer from Liverpool. She was primarily known for her works of psychological fiction, often macabre tales set among the English working class. Bainbridge won the Whitbread Awards prize for best novel in 1977 and 1996; she was nominated five times for the Booker Prize. She was described in 2007 by Charlotte Higgins as "a national treasure". In 2008, ''The Times'' named Bainbridge on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". Biography Early life Beryl Bainbridge was born in Allerton, Liverpool and brought up in nearby Formby. Her parents were Richard Bainbridge and Winifred Baines. Although she gave her date of birth in ''Who's Who'' and elsewhere as 21 November 1934, she was born in 1932 and her birth was registered in the first quarter of 1933. When German former prisoner of war Harry Arno Franz wrote to her in November 1947, he mentioned her 15th birthday. She enjoyed writin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heavy Water And Other Stories
''Heavy Water and Other Stories'' is a collection of nine short stories by Martin Amis. It was first published in 1998 by Jonathan Cape. ''Two Stories'' The collection includes "Denton's Death" and "Let Me Count the Times," which comprised Amis's ''Two Stories'', published in 1994. Stories * "Career Move" (first published in ''The New Yorker'' in 1992) in which the literary world is inverted; screenplay writers such as Alistair struggle to have their work published in small magazines, whilst poets such as Luke are courted by Hollywood publishing conglomerates and fly first-class around the world. * "Denton's Death" (''Encounter'', 1976) in which the protagonist sits alone in his squalid room and ponders his forthcoming assassination at the hands of three hired killers using a 'machine'.online text * "State of England" (''The New Yorker'', 1986) set at a fee-paying school, the narrator using a mobile phone to communicate with his estranged wife and reflecting on his up and dow ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Martin Amis
Martin Louis Amis (born 25 August 1949) is a British novelist, essayist, memoirist, and screenwriter. He is best known for his novels ''Money'' (1984) and ''London Fields'' (1989). He received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his memoir ''Experience'' and has been listed for the Booker Prize twice (shortlisted in 1991 for ''Time's Arrow'' and longlisted in 2003 for '' Yellow Dog''). Amis served as the Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester until 2011. In 2008, ''The Times'' named him one of the fifty greatest British writers since 1945. Amis's work centres on the excesses of " late-capitalist" Western society, whose perceived absurdity he often satirises through grotesque caricature; he has been portrayed as a master of what ''The New York Times'' called "the new unpleasantness".Stout, Mira"Martin Amis: Down London's mean streets" ''The New York Times'', 4 February 1990. Inspired by Saul Bellow and Vladimir Nabokov, as we ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hanan Al-Shaykh
Hanan al-Shaykh ( ar, حنان الشيخ; born 12 November 1945, Beirut) is a Lebanese author of contemporary literature. Biography Hanan al-Shaykh was born Beirut, Lebanon, in 1945, into a strict Shi'a family. Her father and brother exerted strict social control over her during her childhood and adolescence. She attended the Almillah primary school for Muslim girls where she received a traditional education for Muslim girls, before continuing her education at the Ahliah school. She continued her gender-segregated education at the American College for Girls in Cairo, Egypt, graduating in 1966. She returned to Lebanon to work for the Lebanese newspaper '' An-Nahar'' until 1975. She left Beirut again in 1975 at the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War and moved to Saudi Arabia to work and write there. She now lives in London with her family. Her daughter is Juman Malouf, a writer, illustrator and costume designer who is the romantic partner of American director Wes Anderson. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wraith Squadron (novel)
''Star Wars: X-wing'' is a ten-book series of ''Star Wars'' novels by Michael A. Stackpole (who also co-wrote the similarly named comic book series) and Aaron Allston. Stackpole's contributions cover the adventures of a new Rogue Squadron formed by Wedge Antilles, while Allston's focus on Antilles' Wraith Squadron. Background While preparing to write the series, Stackpole contacted ''Star Wars'' Expanded Universe author Timothy Zahn, whose ''Thrawn'' trilogy also features a group called Rogue Squadron. After the first book came out, Stackpole asked Zahn for permission to use his character Talon Karrde; Zahn changed about three words of dialogue. Later, Zahn asked Stackpole if he could use Booster Terrik in the first book of his '' Hand of Thrawn'' duology; Stackpole returned the favor of changing three words. Plot synopses While the first eight books are largely continuous, the first four form a complete story arc (being continuous works by Stackpole), and the next three for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
